The Great Orion, Horsehead and Flame Nebulae, Imaged with a SVBony SV535 105mm Lense and SV405CC Camera. 26 x 2 Minute Frames Combined and Enhanced in Pixinsight.

 

NGC346, Nebulosity in the SMC(Small Magellanic Cloud), Approx 200,000 Light Years Distant. 46x 5 Minute Frames taken with a ZWO ASI153 Cooled Camera and Celestron C8 Edge HD Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope and Combined and Enhanced in Pixinsight.

 

Small Magellanic Cloud's Main Nebula Complex Featuring NGC346, Middle Right, and NGC371, Middle. Approximately 200,000 LIGHT YEARS Distant. Shot in Combination HaOiii and OiiiSii Narrowband with a ZWO ASI183 Cooled Camera and Sharpstar 100qii Refractor Telescope..

 

The (SMC) Small Magellanic Cloud (Galaxy), NGC292, 200,000 Light Years Distant and 7000 Light Years Across in the Southern Hemisphere Sky Circumpolar to the South Celestial Pole

 The most striking features are the two blue reflection nebulae near the bottom left of the image, NGC346 and NGC371, 1149 and 444 light years across respectively.  Mid left and left bottom NGC361 and NGC416, seemingly smaller and insignificant visually in comparison but still with true scales of  91 and 71 light years across respectively.  Below also is an annotated image so you can know perhaps better what all that's about.

IC4628, Bright Nebula in Scorpius, 2700 Light Years Distant and 71 Light Years in Diameter. 36 x 5 Minute frames Integrated and Enhanced in Pixinsight.

 

IC4628 in Scorpius.  I really like the offset of the blue reflection nebula and much denser and spatially distinct red hydrogne alpha emission area.  

Antares Nebula(Red, Bottom Left), Rho Ophiuchi(Blue, Top Right)and Globular Cluster Messier 4 taken with Canon 550D and Vixen ED80 Refractor. 22x 5 Minute Exposures Combined and Enhanced in Pixinsight and Further Processing in Affinity.

This is my first, for a long time, and fairly limited attempt to image this area.  In years past I have been limited by my ability to post process and enhance the nebula around and near the red giant star, Antares.  With access to and now skills in  Pixinsight and about 1 hour of telscope time this is a belated first try.

 

Cloudy Night!? Messier 24 Sagittarius Star Cloud and NGC 292 Small Magellanic Cloud taken with DwarfLab 2 Smart Telescope 22nd August 2026

                                                             M24 Sagittarius Star Cloud

NGC 204 Small Magellanic Cloud

Random Star Field with Dark Lane(s) in Sagittarius 18th August 2026. Canon 550D and Vixen ED80. 41 x 5 Minute Frames combined and enhanced in Pixinsight.

 

NGC6559, The Chinese Dragon Nebula in Sagittarius, 5000 Light Years Distance(Approx),

Taken with Sharpster Qii 100mm Refractor and ZWO ASI183 Camera, 52x 5 Minute Frames, combined and enhanced in Pixinsight.

 

SH2-27 Cobold/Zeta Ophiuchi Nebula 440 Light Years in Distance. Imaged 15th August 2026 with Celectron C8 Edge SCT and ZWO ASI1533 Camera. 51 x 5 Minute Frames (just under 3 hours total) Integration

 

Large Magellanic Cloud,Satellite Eliptical Galaxy to our Mikly Way Galaxy, 163000 Light Years in distance, taken with SV535 Lense and SV405CC Camera. 11 x 120 Second frames combined and enhanced in Pixinsight

 

Fighting Dragons of Ara, NGC6188, with Multi Broadband Filter, ASI183 OSC and Sharpstar100qii Refractor on a HEQ5. 23 x 5 min exposures, about 2 Hours all up.

 NGC 6188 in Constellation Ara 3800 Light Years Distant.

Globular Clusters NGC104 47 Tucanae taken with Sharpstar100qii Refracter and ZWO ASI183 Camera. 10 x 30 Sec Frames. and NGC 5139 Omega Centauri taken with Vixen ED80SF and Modified Canon 550D 43 x 30 Sec Frames

After a few months of having all the equipment packed up and stored away I setup agian this time with a permanent treated pine piers.  A quick test on Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae and Omega Centuari and now hopefully some good Milky Way/ Scorpius and Saggitarius Imaging to come for August before the evening daylight returns.

 

Sharpstar 100qii. ASI183 and Heq5 Mount

Vixen ED80SF,Canon 550D and EQ6 Mount

Scorpius through the Clouds taken Google Pixel 9 Pro

 

The Omega Centauri Globular Cluster. NGC5139

 


Which image do you prefer? This gigantic cluster of stars sits some 17000 light years away just above the galactic rim but a little closer to galactic centre, above the next spiral arm over.  It's puported to harbour its own black hole and might have been a small elliptical galaxy in its own right but in the past, drifting too close to the Milky Way, its has been captured. I caught this last night, Saturday/Sunday 27th/28th March with 120 seperate 30 second frames with a Celestron HD Edge C8 and ZWO533 Camera, then combined today in a program, Pixinsight. The bottom image is purely the resolved stars with the background removed and provides a little bit more of a colour hit.   The top image is perhaps more authentic combining both stars and the background with noise reduction and curve adjustment applied.  I think it preserves the inate central bright glow, that you see visually through a telescope. The OCD amongst us might also note that the cluster is not centred in the frame.  This is due to the 'Platesolving' process, that automtically detects and then centres an object refusing to work, probably due to the incredible amount of stars in this fairly narrow field of view and I was also too impatient at the time to try and figure it out manually.  In the end I quite liked the 'offcentred' composition of the shot so I didn't crop it.

Sombrero Galaxy, Messier 104, 34 Million Light Years Away. 33x5 Minute Exposures with ZWO ASI533 Camera and Celestron C8 Edge HD with 0.7 Focal Reducer. Pixinsight to Align, Combine and Enhance.

 

Time-lapse Rostrevor Avoca/Fingal Sunday Evening to Monday 8th and 9 th March 2026

Rostrevor Time-lapse

Part of Vela Supernova Remnant (in Constellation Vela of course!) 60x 300 second frames taken with Canon 550D and vixen ED80SF. Processed in Pixinsight.

This image is approximately 2.6x1.5 degree FOV.  The remnant itself extends some three times or more as far. The cloud is the left over remants of an exploded star 900 light years away about 11000 years ago.  Thress versions, Starless, Just a hint of stars andvthe third a more realistic starfield representaion.

In Pixinsight, once the stars are removed and processed seperately, there is a lot of control of the amount of linear to nonlinear stretching where the intesity of the starfield in the original image can be easily ramped down depending on personal preference and choice for the final overall appearance of the processed image.

The first just shows the structure of the nebulous expanding dust cloud.T he second mainly portrays this too but with only just a small suggestion of the starfield.  The third shaw a more robust repesentation of the overall nebula and stars in the field of view.  The fourth is a rawer looking version showing a stacked but slightly enhanced representaion of the original scene,

You can add a comment to this post below to let me know which version you like best.

Stars removed for more focused processing of nebula

Small amount of stars added back

More definitive add back of stars

More like the original scene with some enhancement

Random Nebulosity in the Constellation Vela. Taken with ASI183 Astro Cooled Camera and Sharpstar 100Qii Refractor. 32x5 Minute Frames Combined and enhanced in Pixinsight.

 I was aiming to capture some of the Vela Supernova Remnant but it's scale across the sky far outstripped the field of view of my ASI183 Astro Cooled Camera and Sharpstar 100Qii Refractor.   I decided to uncover and setup my VixenED80 amd Canon550D, but before this I picked out this random unnamed area of nebulosity in the ASIair Sky Atlas.

The Random Nebulous Area of Vela

February 4th Mineral and Mono Full Moon Image. On a Clear Night I Captured 400 Indivdual frames with a Modified for Astro Canon 450D DSLR Camera, Skywatcher ED80 Refractor Telescope and Orion 0.80 Focal Reducer Flattner. The 400 Frames were alligned and cropped in PIPP, Stacked and Wavelet sharpened in Registax and then the "Business End' of Colour Enhancement in Photoshop.

Even though the image of the moon is technically bigger without the Field Flattner/Reducer past experience demonstrated to me that the colour correction without it is inferior.      In the first instance(capture) and second instance(stacking and sharpening) a colour moon image will always appear mostly monotone.   It's the gentle layering of small incremental saturation enhancements( for this image 18) that tease out the colour in the light captured by the camera.